Tag Archives: learning curves

Well, when we last met, I had decided to give Paint Shop Pro 8X a whirl as my photo organizer with an eye toward replacing Photoshop Elements 12 as my primary editing software. Elements, you might recall me saying, had been giving me acute migraines with its constant freeze ups and crashes. There’s more to report on that side of the story but first, some Initial thoughts on Paint Shop Pro 8X.

I shelled out 49 bucks for PSP8X and have been trying ever since to negotiate the mother of all learning curves to use it. The instruction manual is just as daunting. It’s another one of those “missing manuals,” as David Pogue titles his books on the Windows operating systems which are, by the way, fabulous. I have every edition from Windows 98 on. David, please do one for Paint Shop Pro! The only manual now is a PDF File. Of course you can print the whole thing out but be warned, it is more than 800 pages. Having spent a “kings ransom” on printer ink, I decided to go with the PDF. A book would have been better but I’m old and not into reading ebooks.

No doubt my calcifying brain has a lot to do with my difficulty. Perhaps I am a 70 year old suffering from ADHD and need a dose of whatever they’re feeding the kids these days. Frankly, I just got totally lost in the maze of brushes, graphics and so on. Perhaps if they had made the graphics part of it another section or something, it would have been easier to grasp.

I did, however, find my way to and through the RAW Conversion Panel and it is quite good though I think Elements is more thorough and easier to use…..that’s probably a cheap shot because I am so used to Elements.

Suffice to say, I’m still messing with it and will, from time to time, give further progress reports on my schooling.

In the midst of all this, my 4 year old desktop began sending distinct warning signals of hard drive failure: Constant pleas to run “Check Disc” to repair damaged sectors and repeated messages that windows “has stopped working” etc and etc. So I did a little cyber monday shopping and picked up a Lenovo H-30-50 desktop machine with 16 gigs of ram, a 2 TB hard drive and an Intel I-7 processor at a reasonable price. The Windows 10 Operating system is a big improvement over Windows 8 but then anything would be an improvement and best of all, the learning curve isn’t as steep as Paint Shop.

I also reloaded my Elements software and so far, knock on wood, its working swimmingly. Perhaps I gave Adobe a bad wrap. Old guys can get crabby.

Now that I am back in cyber space, I will try to be a bit more productive blog wise. Keep the Faith everybody. See you next time.